This was written by Iron Knee. Posted on Sunday, November 14, 2010, at 11:23 am. Filed under Irony. Tagged Republicans. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

Whoa hold on a minute Johnny. This is clearly not a partisan issue it is played by both sides equally. In my state the Incumbant Dem Gov started his attack ads the day after his repub opponent anounced he was running. I voted for the gov, but I was very displeased with his ad campaign. There are many examples of smear/false ads on both sides of the isle.

True. And Patriot is of course right that both sides do it. But we should differentiate between “attack” ads – those which grossly distort the opponent’s record and stoke irrational fear – and those which merely draw fair, factual distinctions.

I’m not implying that anyone here does, but too often the media lump them all together as though they’re equally bad. But I wouldn’t mind more ads which point out true differences between candidates. Those are more informative than “positive” ads which merely puff up a candidate as a church-going family man.

I’m sure this could descend into a discussion about who gets to decide what “truth” is, but that would be a red herring, some ads are just blatantly false by any standard except one based on faith.

In my market, if I had voted solely for those who didn’t run negative advertising, demonizing his/her opponent, I would have had to leave 90% of my ballot blank. It was disgusting, and I ended up losing respect for those I actually voted for.

patriotsgt: I felt like what Johnny was trying to say wasn’t that ONLY Republican Tea Partiers ran slam campaigns, but that it’s the only kind of campaign they ran. I’m not saying I agree, just that I don’t think he said what you think he said.

Sammy: I did the same thing. I don’t care what politicians think of other politicians. I want to know what they’re going to DO. I don’t understand how it got to the point where accusing your opponent of being the anti-Christ wins you the vote. It’s sad that people are stupid enough to buy into that.

Chelsey – I could go along with that. I just wanted it to be clarified that both parties practice negative campaigning and there are Tea Party candidates, like a few Dem and Repub cadidates that did not resort to brainless attack ads.
Bert – you are absolutely correct. I guess if no one voted then maybe they’d get the message, or everyone did a write in for say George Washington or Abe Lincoln instead.

There is no doubt that both parties run negative ads. However, I’ve actually seen people attack the Dems for being spineless if they *don’t* run negative ads. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t!

So maybe a better criterion would not just be whether you run negative ads, but (as others have commented) whether you only run negative ads. In addition, I think there is a big difference between negative ads that are relatively truthful (like pointing out the voting record of your opponent), and outright lies (like accusing your opponent of supporting death panels).